A big-picture/close-reading appreciation of Steve Ditko through the lens of his relationship with the world known as Comicdom. (It’s also a story about a cartoonist’s profound investment in words and his hostility toward editors who didn’t understand his unusual approach to language.)
It’s the air we breathe.
Working his way through a stack of recent mainstream and alternative superhero comics, Ken Parille finds many drowning in clichés and a few that get it right.
Innovation in the 1990s: a comic book in which people talk like people.
A Not-So-Secret History of Superman, Wonder Woman, and the American Superhero.
Leslie Stein makes great comics!
Roy Lichtenstein is one of the twentieth-century’s most important artists. He’s far from one of its best letterers.
Revisiting the “Brave Nude World” of philosopher, psychologist, psychiatrist, anthropologist, and cartoonist Abner Dean.
Words, punctuation, and “orthographic consistency” on the comics page: theories and practices.
She tweeted that “comics criticism is trash and must be destroyed.” Does “comics” agree? In this episode, Grid veers away from comics boosterism (and moves perilously close to parody) as we search for answers. That, and Frank Cho’s unmentionables.
Tim Hensley’s astonishing Sir Alfred #3, in which Alfred Hitchcock becomes what he already was: a comic-strip character.
Perhaps the critic had unrealistic expectations.
Digging into Clowes’s masterpiece with commentary and annotations on everything from the comic’s obscure allusions to its cosmic themes.
In one image, Daniel Clowes defeats the superhero. Also: Eugenics, Fetishes, Word Games, Race, Feminism, Fredric Wertham, Corporate Branding, Libertarians, Pajamas, Stan Lee, Graffiti, The Austrian School of Economics, and much more!
To mark the release of Daniel Clowes’s The Complete Eightball #1-18, we look at the cartoonist’s career and comics from 1988 to 1998.
A look at sentimentality in an Ivan Brunetti image and time in a Charles Schulz strip.
More reflections on “the state of the art.” Along the way we talk Lichtenstein, meta-characters, the ideal format, page orientation, Spidey vs. Spiderman, “philosophical nihilism,” cat sneakers, and the like.
Reflections on the “state of the art.” Along the way there’s talk of editorial malfeasance, lyrical ambiguity, feminism, fannish-ness, Kirby, Byron, motorcycle comics, etc. . . .
The title says it all. Or does it?
All about interpretation and responses to James Sturm’s comic strip “The Sponsor” . . .
A generally positive TCJ columnist goes negative, finding something wrong with five recently-released comics: Seconds, Vertigo Quarterly, Ragnarớk, The Death of Archie, and Multiversity. He also answers the question: “Who is the best American-comics-influenced British writer?”
Ken Parille explores the work of Pete Morisi, an unsung master of un-action comics . . .
Toronto’s Koyama Press is releasing some great stuff . . .
Searching for the unusual in the sometimes formulaic world of mainstream comics, we travel back to 1972 and uncover Jack Kirby’s despair and Alex Niño’s faces.
